Key Witness in Markiv Case Was Clueless About Donbas War - Journalist

15 July 2019 15:26

William Roguelon, the main witness in the case of Ukrainian soldier Vitaliy Markiv who was sentenced to 24 years' imprisonment in Italy, had no idea what was happening in the Donbas on the day of the murder of Andrea Roccheli, says Roguelon's colleague Paul Gogo.

"He was like many freelancers, a bit lost, didn’t understand what was happening. He even asked us something like who are the bad [guys], who are the good," Gogo told Hromadske on July 14. "So we had to explain to him who were the separatists, where was the Ukrainian army. And we had to explain to him what was happening in Sloviansk"

Gogo says he found the whole case and the verdict surprising because there was constant shelling in the Donbas at the time and "I can’t imagine that someone [would have] decided to kill this journalist like that."

The Italian photojournalist Rocchelli and his Russian translator Andrei Mironov were killed during fighting between the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Russia-led separatists in May 2014, near the city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine. Markiv, who holds both Ukrainian and Italian citizenship, was sentenced to 24 years in prison by the Italian court in the city of Pavia on July 12.

Markiv denies the allegations and his lawyer, Raffaele Della Valle, said they will appeal the court decision.